Online food network Tastemade raises $10 million

The online food network Tastemade has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Raine Ventures and Redpoint Ventures, an infusion of cash that will help the digital media company expand its reach and develop new technology.

Tastemade is the brainchild of former Demand Media executives Larry Fitzgibbon, Steven Kydd and Jose Perez, who sought to create an online version of Food Network. The founders identified YouTube as a platform to attract a global audience of foodies.

With initial backing from YouTube and Redpoint, Tastemade built a studio in Santa Monica and launched a channel featuring succinct and stylish three-minute video cooking recipes, personality-driven cooking shows like SortedFood, in which a group of four "mates" from London talk about cooking, and travelogues such as the Perennial Plate, which produces short films that combine eating and sightseeing.

Meanwhile Tastemade has assembled a network of about 100 channels dedicated to food and lifestyle programming, which now reaches about 12 million monthly viewers from around the world, Fitzgibbon said.

Tastemade also launched an iPhone app for users to create one-minute videos of their favorite restaurants and food "destinations," and share these experiences on Facebook, Twitter and through email and text messages.

The new funding round is from Redpoint and Raine Ventures, an investment arm of the Raine Group, a firm created in partnership with William Morris Endeavor talent agency, which advises and invests in companies at the intersection of technology and media. It will provide for continued growth.

"Going forward, the areas that we see as the biggest opportunity to invest in is our network," said Fitzgibbon. "We'll continue to invest in that area, as well as in technology."

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